Coasts - Research Projects

Science Centres: Coasts

Coastal Adaptation to Climate Change

 

NIWA is developing guidelines and advice to help coastal communities adapt to climate change.

Marine food webs

We need information on the food web structures of our marine ecosystems in order to manage the effects on the ecosystem of fishing, aquaculture and mining, as well as understanding the potential impacts of climate variability and change on our oceans. 

Restoration of seagrass beds in Whangarei Harbour

Seagrass beds form an important undersea habitat for small fish, seahorses and shellfish in New Zealand. A large amount of New Zealand’s seagrass habitat has been lost as a result of human activities, with only small pockets remaining in some harbours. NIWA is leading a small-scale transplantation trial in Whangarei Harbour to determine whether transplanted seagrass can survive, and hopefully thrive, at a former site.

Predicting long-term sedimentation and heavy metal accumulation in estuaries

NIWA has developed an Urban Stormwater Contaminant (USC) model to enable urban planners to predict sedimentation and heavy metal accumulation in estuaries and identify problem areas in order to target mitigation measures. The model supports decision making by predicting contaminant accumulation under various catchment development scenarios over 50-100 year timescales.

Predicting long-term contaminant accumulation in the central Waitemata and southeastern Manukau Harbours

This project was undertaken for Auckland Regional Council to identify significant sources of contaminants in the central Waitemata and southeastern Manukau Harbours. The efficacy of stormwater treatment and contaminant source control measures were also assessed.

Valuing New Zealand's marine environment

This unique project is the first systematic attempt to quantify and map environmental values of New Zealand's coastal marine ecosystem. It uses existing data sources to create a series of spatially explicit data layers. The information has applications in biosecurity, conservation, and coastal management.

Estuarine Ecodiagnostics

Monitoring the impact of urban development on estuary ecosystems.

Physical Hazards Affecting Coastal Margins and the Continental Shelf

This programme is about providing improved knowledge of the causes and potential consequences of coastal hazards in New Zealand, and how often they might pose a threat.

Wave And Storm-surge Projections (WASP)

NIWA is working on a FRST-funded project to produce a model, validated by 40 years of historic data, to project future wave and storm surges off the coast for two climate change scenarios. This will be at a nationally consistent scale around New Zealand and will help decision makers plan for future hazards. We intend to make the results available in an online tool, and are looking for feedback about what people want from this.

Estuarine water quality: the CLUES Estuary Tool

Many of New Zealand's rivers fail to meet national guidelines for nutrient levels. NIWA has developed the Catchment Land Use & Environmental Sustainability (CLUES) Estuary Tool to predict the effects of land use on estuarine nutrient concentrations.

Contamination early-warning system for commercial shellfish harvest

Contamination of shellfish by faecal microbes is a health hazard to the consumer and so is of particular concern to the commercial producer. NIWA scientists have developed a model to predict shellfish contamination using a ‘neural network’ – a tool that has become increasingly popular for predicting the behaviour of complex systems.

IceCUBE - Antarctic coastal marine ecosystems

IceCUBE (Coastal Underwater Benthic Ecosystems) is the umbrella name for our coastal marine research project that had its first field year in 2001/02. The project aims to better understand the structure and functioning of benthic (seafloor) ecosystems along the Ross Sea coast.

Sustainable Aquaculture

Coastal aquaculture provides one of New Zealand’s biggest opportunities to generate new wealth from the primary production sector. Uncertainty about potential environmental effects of aquaculture expansion is a major impediment to realising this potential. We have developed numerous techniques to determine the local environmental effects of marine farms and the effect of environmental conditions on crop yields.